1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a pod combine and more particularly to a pod combine that includes a portable harvester and a thresher where the percentage of shellable product that is introduced into the thresher is substantially increased by the operation of a cluster breaker assembly and suction fan device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
U.S. Pat. No. 3,705,483, entitled "Multi-Row Multi-Crop Harvester" discloses a self-propelled harvesting machine for harvesting different types of crops, such as snap beans, lima beans, peas, dry beans, and the like. The harvester is arranged to strip the foliage and product in the pod from the plants, leaving a substantial portion of the vines still rooted in the ground. The pods and extraneous foliage are deposited in a receiver and transported to a processing station where the product in the pods and the extraneous foliage are introduced into a thresher or a viner, similar to that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,768,628, entitled "Viner". In the fixed viner or threshing device, the pods are opened and the product, peas, beans, lima beans, soy beans, and the like, is separated from the pod and extraneous foliage.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,769,988 discloses a legume harvester with an auger feed that harvests the leguminous crop and conveys the leguminous crop and extraneous vines and foliage by means of a rotating auger, into a threshing device where the pods are opened and the shelled crop collected in a receiver.
Copending United States patent application, Ser. No. 477,202 discloses a pod combine that includes a harvester and thresher mounted in tandem on a self-propelled mobile frame. The harvester strips the unopened pods and a portion of the foliage and vines from the plants which remain rooted in the ground. A twin screw feed device feeds the harvested material to the thresher. The thresher includes a foraminous reel and an axially positioned impeller having beaters that minimize convection currents within the thresher. A product collecting device is positioned below the reel, and a separator device is arranged to separate the foliage from the shelled product fed by the product collecting device. When the stripped pods are fed into the thresher, they are mixed with foliage. The greater the percentage of foliage in the mixture, the less the percentage of product that is separated from the mixture. The waste materials tend to impede the passage of the shelled product through the foraminous reel. Therefore, there is need for separating a substantial portion of the foliage from the podded product prior to introducing the mixture of foliage and podded product into the thresher. In this manner the percentage of shellable product that is introduced into the thresher may be substantially increased as may the efficiency of the thresher in separating the shelled product from the foliage and other extraneous material.